Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

hand across the switch. His
expression and tone were apologetic. ‘We stay,’ he
said. ‘It’s God’s will.’
    And a matter of honour too, she guessed.
    ‘Kapitsa it is, then,’ she said.
    The two men beamed at her as though she had done them a favour. Perhaps she had; they probably believed
she’d just issued them two free passes to heaven. There
were times when she envied the devout.
    As the plane banked around she took the call from Valentina.
This one was v-mail, recorded in one of the offices in the
government building. Behind Valentina, men with Kalashnikovs
lurked at windows. Bureaucrats turned desks into makeshift
barricades. Somebody was operating a byte-shredder, wiping
computer memories, setting up a blizzard of interference.
    ‘Hi, Myra, hope this gets through. Jesus, did you hear
that the nuke thing’s all over the media? We’ve got
news collectors – warm bodies as well as remotes –
coming in all the time, and the demonstrators are acting up for
them so they can watch themselves being heroic on CNN. Fucking
classic media feedback howl. The nuke thing has really freaked a
lot of them out – in all the factions, the lefty
headbangers and the pro-UN types and the fucking spa-cists. Not
to mention our very own patriots. Our agents in the crowd –
hell, even the reporters – are picking up talk about
storming the building. We want you back as soon as you can;
we’ll have a militia driver on standby at the
airport.’
    The message was time-stamped at 1.35 p.m., and it was now
2.50. Myra blinked up a split-screen of television news channels
while taking the third call. The seatbelt light came on; the
aeroplane was beginning its descent to Kapitsa. Thank God for
ultra-precise radio tuning – Myra could remember when you
couldn’t even take a call in level flight. The
pilot’s voice was raised slightly as he argued with
air-traffic control for precedence, throwing diplomatic weight
and Kazakh curses about equally. Myra looked out of the window.
More aircraft than usual – hastily hired jets, she guessed
– were parked beside the runways. The media circus was in
town.
    Her anonymous caller flickered into view.
    ‘Jason!’
    The CIA agent gave her a tense smile, but warm around the
eyes. ‘Hello, Myra. Good to see you. Wow, you look amazing.
Just in time for your global stardom, huh?’
    ‘Hah!’
    ‘Almost as much excitement as the coup. Anyway…
I’m here to tell you that we’ve got somewhere with
the investigation.’
    Undercarriage down, thump.
    ‘What – oh, Georgi’s – ’
    ‘Yup. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Myra,
but -shit, we got this out of the black labs, it’s
bleeding-edge stuff. We did an autopsy on a goddamn cell
sample – don’t ask how we got it’
    A bump, a rocking forward, another bump, and the incline of
deceleration.
    ‘The point is, Myra, we found traces of a very specific,
very subtle bit of nanotech. It’s not exactly a poison,
that’s the clever thing. It builds up into a little
machine, then disintegrates when it’s done its job. We
found a few gear trains, but that was enough.’
    The aircraft came to a halt and the seatbelt light went off.
The door banged open and the steps angled down. Myra stood up and
shuffled forward, behind Nurup and in front of Mustafa, still
talking and listening. She waved absently to the pilot, left him
a handful of gold coins as a bonus. She was thinking ahead.
    ‘Enough for what?’
    ‘Enough to identify it. It’s a spacer
assassination weapon. A heart-stopper.’
    A heart-stopper. Yes. It was that.
    She blinked away the floating image of Jason to concentrate on
her surroundings. No signs of actual incoming fire. She followed
Nurup towards the terminal building, about a hundred metres away.
Jason’s voice in her head continued.
    ‘So there’s no doubt any more – it was
murder. Now, there’s no proof the space movement had
a hand in it, beyond supplying the weapon, but the circumstantial
evidence is kind of strong.’
    You could say that,’ Myra agreed, making a conscious
effort to unclench her jaw. Having her suspicions confirmed after
all this time of indulging then dismissing them was a shock.
    Fucking heart attack …
    ‘They don’t exactly throw that sort of kit
around,’ she mused aloud. ‘Too easy to
reverse-engineer, for one thing. But why would they do
it?’
    Through the long corridor, letting Nurup and Mustafa do the